Parental food provisioning is related to nestling stress response in wild great tit nestlings: implications for the development of personality.

摘要: Background: Variation in early nutrition is known to play an important role shaping the behavioural development of individuals. Parental prey selection may have long-lasting influences. In birds foraging on arthropods, for instance, specific types, e.g. spiders and caterpillars, matter as they different levels taurine which effect personality development. Here we investigated how naturally occurring variation amounts provisioned nestlings at day 4 8 after hatching, related response handling stress a wild passerine, great tit (Parus major). Broods were crossfostered split-brood design allowing us separate maternal genetic effects from rearing effects. Adult provisioning behaviour was monitored four eight hatching using video recordings. Individual subjected test age 14 days, validated proxy exploratory adult. Results: mainly determined by environment. We show that, contrary our predictions, not amount spider biomass, but caterpillar biomass delivered per nestling significantly affected individual performance test. Chicks with lower caterpillars exhibited stronger response, reflecting faster later life, than individuals who received larger caterpillars. Conclusions: These results suggest that natural parental modulates developmental trajectories their offspring’s via food provisioning. Since might also reflect local environmental conditions, influence respond these conditions.